Sons of Anarchy

The Whole Gang 

Leave The Tribe 

Television is all about manipulation, more so than any other medium.  Film, before sound, was forced to rely heavily on art, you had to see the world in black and white and gray and not hear any of it so even when it was trying to be manipulative, there was a distance.  Television, funded by corporations from the get go, has no such distinction. 

I just finished the fourth season of Sons Of Anarchy and, more than any show I’ve seen in a long time, it had something to say without the manipulation.  Its message is clear and complex, and more essential than any number of “important” shows that pass off as “art”.  The only entities being manipulated here are the characters on the show and we, as the audience, get to draw our own conclusions.  It’s not a perfect show, but it far surpasses its genre expectations.

After four seasons, I have a conclusion.  It ain’t pretty. 

Before I continue, go here and read the essay.  It captures my own feelings about the first season of SOA and builds a unique lens with which to view the rest of it or gain some important perspective for the three seasons following if you already have.  I don’t agree with all of it, but it shows why Sons Of Anarchy is one of the smartest shows on TV.

A great quote from the site:

“Sons Of Anarchy is a series that explores the question of family loyalty by asking whether the family is an institution that demands the loyalty of its members as a matter of principle, or whether families are institutions that deserve the loyalty of their members because they are supportive and loving environments. The series explores this idea by examining what happens when a family begins to act in a manner that is neither loving or supportive, and it does this by looking at the relationships that make up both the Sons and the 'royal family' at the heart of the organization.”

I would replace “family” there with the word “tribe” or maybe in this case, “club”.  Family is “a loving, supportive environment” and ceases to be family when the love and support leaves.  The family gets bulldozed by the tribe.  There is no family in the Sons Of Anarchy, there is only the group, the gang, the club.

First off, I admit, I was drawn to the show because I wanted to see a bunch of tough biker dudes act crazy and look cool riding bikes in scenic Northern California.  And they do. 

The main character, Jax, a Brad Pitt clone of all things, pulls off the “girls love me, men fear me” attitude so engrained in the male psyche.  His best friend, the giant “Opie”, looks like a huge, brooding caveman, quiet and sensitive in one moment, focused and deadly on the hunt.

   Add to that Bobby, a fat, Elvis impersonator who somehow manages to cut a striking, deadly figure.  A goofy, mo-hawked computer dude named Juice who begins as something akin to comic relief and develops into something much more serious as the seasons continue.  Chibbs: A scarred Scotsmen with a deep burr in his voice.  A psychotic, kill-happy biker whose name is… Happy. 

Clay, the leader, portrayed by Ron Perlman, makes up for his arthritis and lack of good looks with arms twice the size of my legs and a deep, commanding voice.

The women on the show may be less than equals to their biker counterparts, but no less essential.  Nothing on Married With Children can prepare you for Gemma Teller, a somehow beautiful, scarred force of nature every bit as commanding of attention as any hulking biker with heart tattoos that can kill you.  Her motherly power is as authoritative as her manipulation is destructive. 

Tara, as Jax’s “old lady”, is probably the most conflicted of them all, trying to look out for her family and escape the poisonous environment she’s in.  She’s smart, resourceful and even when she falls apart there is an elegant toughness that comes with her desperation.  She grows with the show, changes and not for the better. 

Gemma and Tara 

But when “Tig”, a violent sociopathic “Sergeant at Arms” is riding on his hog bellowing along at elevated speed and volume away from some atrocity, wearing dark sunglasses with the sun behind him and a look of pure focus and power on his face, I can’t help but feel the pull. It looks like freedom. It’s the defining image of the series. 

The show succeeds most when it paints a picture of our society as a series of tribes looking out for their own, run by self-centered shoguns of terror and held together by an invisible glue of extreme, baffling loyalty. 

Witness:

The Sons of Anarchy: a mostly white band of bikers who run guns for the IRA and operate a mechanic shop.  The Nords: a Neo-Nazi  group of bikers who cook meth. The Mayans: a much larger Hispanic Biker gang running heroin and other narcotics.  The Lin Triad: Asian gangsters with Chinese food restaurants, money laundering and prostitution.  The One-Niners: a black gang in Oakland who buys guns from the SOA and uses them in a heroin war with the Mayans.  The Aryans:  a prison gang who operate against anything not white.  The Grim Bastards: a black motorcycle gang out of Lodi who ally themselves with the Sons.

The relationships change as the business changes, with only customary nods to long-term consequences.  A big leather bound hug one day, a knife through the back of your skull the next. 

That would be enough for some riveting action right?  But then you have to add corrupt small town police forces, corporate controlled local governments looking for “progress” and big money, and even more corrupt FBI agents to create a sense of complete disorganization and chaos: a world that is always out to get you from every angle.  There is no rock under which someone isn’t going to jump out and kill you.

But all of that still operates on the level of “cool crime fiction” in which we are manipulated into rooting for the small time Sons of Anarchy against the impossibly large and growing forces around them as they protect their “Charming” little town.  The Sons are underdogs and their tribe is shrinking while other tribes are growing.  Times are getting desperate. 

Where the show truly shows its heart is not during the well staged shootouts, displays of badassery or even in the complex plots as the various forces conspire and act out against each other.  It’s about the family that exists within the tribe and the picture of how all this mess will perpetuate itself like a series of dividing bacteria.

Jax Teller

Jax is torn between his actual family and his tribal family.  He knows his tribe is toxic and despite his proclivity for violence, he is a terribly self-aware human being.  His mother is a master at keeping her thumb on him.  His stepfather is charismatic.  His real father, dead for a long time, only pops up in fits and bursts from old letters and diaries.  And, of course, there is the club and its members: a tribe he’s invested his whole life up this point, like a platoon huddling together for support in a jungle full of hostiles. 

His overdeveloped sense of responsibility to his club infantilizes as much as it protects and Jax’s leadership skills, intelligence and violent acumen prove to undo his desire to leave the criminal life.  He can’t leave it, because he’s too good at it and he won’t know who he is without it.  

He thinks he’s helping his club, but in fact he’s prepping it for destruction.

I hear Jimmy Smits is going to portray a drug dealer who is going to “mentor” Jax.  Yeah, can’t see that one blowing up in everybody’s face.  No way will Jimmy Smits play a harbinger of hope. 

These criminals, all of them with likeable qualities, will never change because they don’t have to.  Either they will be mothered by an “Old Lady” or led by an autocrat.  Even jail is no deterrent; it actually makes them more loyal as shown by “Uncle Otto’s” heart breaking campaign of violence in jail.  When Otto finally breaks in season 4 and turns against his club, and sends Bobby to jail, it’s twice as shocking as any murder he’s committed up that point. 

What SOA doesn’t show is Jax’s actual family: his children.  They are simply formless, characterless entities.  How much can a writer develop a baby, right?  But even that is symbolic because they are empty vessels ready to be filled with a lifetime of tribal manipulation.

Season 4 is loaded with tension because Jax has an elaborate plan of escape, a legitimate shot at leaving the Sons and saving his wife and children, and breaking a vicious cycle.  I know him leaving the Sons ends the show, but I want it anyway.  I yearn for it.  Leave the tribe. 

Also from the aforementioned website:

“At root, Sons Of Anarchy is a series about the violation of the natural order. This order, represented by the utopian noble savagery of the founding father's vision is violated not only by Clay's brutal authoritarianism but also by the savagery of the series female characters..”

Where I take a difference in opinion is when the writer says “At root, Sons Of Anarchy is a series about the violation of the natural order.”   Sons of Anarchy is showing what the natural order is.  As human beings we find a group, get our identity and fight like hell to protect it.  That is natural.  Breaking from our groups, breaking from who are groups tell us we are, is unnatural. 

Who are we without our tribes? 

It’s long been the American way to find our identity and purpose in our occupations and possessions.  Why should criminals be any different?

I look at my own life.  I am a teacher, I see students doing this every day.  They form groups and gangs and cliques and exist in a feudal state of mild war (except in the case of gangs where it is actual war and not mild). 

Teachers are not immune either.  How many teachers get their sense of identity because they work “for the children” or believe so idealistically in the power of education that they are willing to do “whatever it takes” to accomplish their agendas, even if it means doing the wrong thing. 

And the corporations, the ones funding our television experience, are the ultimate tribes: vast, militaristic machines of money as crushing and heartless as any criminal gang. 

This brings me back to the image of Tig, riding his bike and hitting the throttle with one hand and reaching behind with the other as he unloads a .45 at a rival.  His “brothers” surround him in a throng of thunderous motorcycles. But there’s no freedom in it.  He may as well be tied to his hog.

 All it takes is one misstep, one stupid rock in the road or one millisecond of inattention and he turns into a body at the end of a thirty foot blood streak cooking on the hot pavement.

 And for what? 

Break free.  Leave the tribe.